It's closing in on a year since AI was catapulted into the mainstream through the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, with investors witnessing first-hand the financial gains that can be made through building a stake in some of these trailblazing businesses.
For retail investors, cashing in on the success of chatbots, machine learning and all things AI is nearly impossible.
OpenAI and Anthropic are two of the leading companies with a sole focus on AI, with the latter being birthed after several former employees of the ChatGPT creator left the company amid concerns about the route the firm was heading down.
However, both OpenAI and Anthropic, which launched Claude in March to rival ChatGPT, are private and therefore, unless you’re friends with an executive at the firm, it is impossible to invest in.
Tech giants like Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), Alphabet Inc's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Google, Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) have found it slightly easier to funnel cash into the technology meaning if retail investors do want to invest, these - albeit highly diversified - companies may be the place to go.
So who is investing in AI?
Amazon for starters, the e-commerce giant announced on Monday it would be investing up to US$4 billion into Anthropic, starting with a US$1.25 billion injection in return for a ‘minority stake’.
It’s not just an investment for Amazon, but also a collaboration, with the US giant expected to provide Anthropic with cloud storage and AWS-designed semiconductors which can be used for machine learning models.
Anthropic also garnered the attention of Google, which bought a 10% stake in the AI company for US$300 million back in February, as well as receiving investment from companies like Zoom and Salesforce, which reportedly totalled around US$2.7 billion.
At rivals OpenAI, Microsoft was one of the first big tech companies to go all in on the artificial intelligence train when it pumped US$10 billion into the technological pioneers.
Huge servers are required for machine learning. Source: Interesting Engineering
A similar deal to Anthropic and Amazon’s was reportedly made, with the world’s third-largest company providing OpenAI with its Azure cloud-computing power.
Shortly after Microsoft’s Bing launched its own chatbot, using ChatGPT’s technology, to run alongside the search engine's more typical functions.
Meta, Facebook’s owner, appears to be slightly more inwardly focused than some of its rivals when it comes to AI, Zuckerberg’s company said it planned to invest US$33 billion into AI and already has its own division for the technology.
Hoping to forget the mistakes of the Metaverse it hasn’t changed its name to MetaAI yet but the group is using rapidly the tech to build new products such as Llama2, its own version of ChatGPT, the SeamlessM4T, similar to Babelfish, which can translate human voices into other languages as well as implementation into other sections of the business.
Apple AI Source: New York Magazine
Apple will also be cautious about getting left behind, but in true Apple fashion, much of the investment into the technology is being made quietly and internally.
“Significantly” upping the budget for building AI, Apple is believed to be spending millions of dollars a day in development and has a four-year-old team which has spent its existence developing and working on large-language models.
Whether this research is being used to develop a Siri 2.0 remains to be seen, but the tech giant may feel it is time to cash in on the boom soon.